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Howdy all,

Please Help!!!!

I let a friend borrow my 2000 civic, and she accidentally filled it with flex fuel (85% ethanol 15% gasoline). She then drove it 30-40 miles over two days until the engine light came on and she took it to the first garage. It stayed there for another full day until they could drain the tank. The mechanic said it should be alright, but that was in front of my crying friend. She had 1/4 tank of gas when she filled it, so It was basically burning about 64% ethanol. How much damage has my car actually sustained?? Is there anything I should replace?, or am I overreacting. Any information on this would be most welcome. Thanks in advance. Still worried, dugger

 
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From articles I have been reading it seems that e85 is safe on the engine, correct me if I'm wrong, but it does a number on the gas system. I believe its the alcohol that eats away rubber and other components, but since it only happened once I can't quite say the extent of the damage but I would maybe have a mechanic look at everything from the fuel lines to the pump and the injectors. They might be able to tell you if they need replaced or not.

 
Rep Power: 227

I bet that put some pep in your civics step... I hope it all works out.

 
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since you caught it early and got the tank drained you should be fine the main problem that you would run into is that it does not have some of the same additives as regular gasoline, which could lead to a little bit of detonation in the engine, but since you caught it right away and got it out of the system it won't do anything. I have a friend that has a porche, and his engine blew up from too much ethanol in his gas it is supposed to be something like 10% at the pumps but he was getting more like 30% at the pump for some reason. but this was also over a couple months of driving on an actual race motor which was designed to run nothing less than 93 octane. Porche told him that the ethanol over a period of time if kept being used washes away certain additives. Since are cars are econo boxes and the motor is not a race motor you should be totally fine, especially since it was a one time event and you got the gas out of there. Nothing should be damaged at all and you should not have to replace anything, your car is going to be perfectly fine and you shouldn't worry about a thing